Fascinating food in New York and occasionally farther afield

Mumbai Xpress

It's an Indian grilled cheese sandwich, sort of.

This vegetarian snack shop calls it a Mumbai grilled sandwich ($5.99), though if you ordered one from a street vendor in the former Bombay, surely you'd ask for it by another name. The two savory layers sport mild cheese, thin-sliced potato, and onion, but the color and the zing come from coriander chutney.

It arrived at the table in neat quarters that are less prim than tea sandwiches but nearly as manageable. Not so the special pav bhaji (Pow Bodg-ee; $6.99), a pair of warm, buttery sliced buns (the pav) and a pool of thin vegetable curry (the bhaji) served with butter and garnishes of coriander, tomato, and onion. Since our waiter didn't deliver it himself, my dining buddy and I were at a loss: Should we dip the pav? Spread the bhaji on top? Much later our waiter told us that people eat the dish every which way; some nibble at the pav in one hand while spooning up bhaji with the other. That's how we'd cleaned our plate, I told him, though by that time I was on my third napkin.